Administration

Scope of SNEP

TECHNICAL FRAMEWORK

Public Participation

Summary

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The Science Team was challenged in determining how to integrate or dissociate assessments from development of management alternatives, how to define assessments, and what constituted appropriate policy alternatives. The allocation of time to these topics, the role of different individuals directing the efforts, and the challenge of integrating assessments with policy alternatives developed only slowly over time.

Technical Framework for Assessment and Policy Options

The Science Team divided the technical aspects of the project into three primary components: ecosystem assessments, analysis of management and policy strategies, and GIS database development (table A4.2).

Primary components of SNEP technical framework.

Phase 1: Ecosystem Assessment. Phase 1 formed the primary emphasis of SNEP analyses and the bulk of Science Team efforts and final reports. Assessments were intended to address biological, physical, and social aspects of Sierran ecosystems and to link with policy strategies but not depend on them. Assessments would meet agreed-on standards of explicit assumptions, risk assessment, statistical validity, and peer review.
SNEP conducted the assessments using a phase of conceptual dissection and analysis followed irregularly by several phases of synthesis. Although the Sierra Nevada ecosystem conceivably is divisible into a nearly infinite number of component parts and processes, the Science Team identified what it felt to be the most important parts for analysis, based on both the ecosystem standpoint and social priority. These included issues of biological and physical diversity, agents of change (disturbance forces), social components and human communities, and institutions (table A4.3).

SNEP technical framework: ecosystem components in SNEP assessments.

1. What are current ecological, social, and economic conditions?

2. What were historic ecological, social, and economic conditions, trends, and variabilities?

3. What are trends and risks under current policies and management?

4. What policy choices will achieve ecological sustainability consistent with social well-being?

5. What are the implications of these choices for ecological, social, and economic conditions?

Standards for evaluations of conditions and trends were derived from SNEPs operational definitions of health and sustainability.
Although ecosystem components were studied individually, the Science Team made a continuing effort to organize thinking at a higher, more integrated level. Where possible, assessments were linked (riparian with aquatic; vegetation with floristic diversity with forest structure; etc.) so that partial integration was achieved even during the analysis phase. Team presentations and whole-team reviews of draft papers provoked discussion among scientists and provided fertile ground for debate on fundamental topics and conclusions. This interdisciplinary debate proved healthy for the project as it led eventually to greater clarity of analysis and integration on many topics.
Once the detailed technical assessments were completed, efforts turned toward integration. Because scientists work more readily on individual projects rather than in integrated analyses, adequate time had to be left for this part of the project. This task proved to be extremely difficult. Volume I, our summary report, eventually became the vehicle for bringing about integration. This report was intended to synthesize, not abstract, the key integrating and synthetic priorities from the lengthy volume II reports. The discussions, workshops, and joint writing, reviewing, and editing for this volume produced a higher level of conceptual synthesis than had been achieved in the project previously.

Phase 2: Analysis of Management and Policy Strategies. Phase 2 was in the background of the project for the first year or so because it depended on results from assessments. Policy analysis initially focused on quantitative simulation models of commercial forest condition. This aspect was expanded through development of advances in models and use of data. Emphasis on one approach, however, was met with debate in the Science Team when members found other issues to address for Sierra Nevada futures than those amenable to quantitative modeling of forest conditions.
Thus began a phase to broaden the scope of policy scenarios within SNEP. In the spirit of environmental think tanks (e.g., the Rocky Mountain Institute), the Science Team released itself from the constraints of mathematical modeling and considered diverse institutional approaches, thought-models, and fragments of components. In the end, SNEP presented a sample of ideas, each organized similarly, although methods, goals, and ecosystem components addressed differed among them. Finally, to address the concern that most scenarios were fragmentary and unintegrated, SNEP developed a few integrated scenarios for parts of the Sierra, which attempted to synthesize ecosystem components.
Ultimately, the team felt that strategies rather than scenarios more aptly describes the characteristics of the policy examples developed by SNEP, and strategies is the term used in the volume I chapters.

Phase 3: Geographic Information System and On-line Availability. The SNEP GIS Center was developed primarily to support SNEP inventories, mapping, assessments, simulations, and modeling efforts. A secondary goal was to make SNEPs data and data-management system available to federal, state, and local agencies, as well as various interest groups (e.g., university researchers, private industries, environmental organizations, and local communities) and the general public. The SNEP GIS Center collaborated and co-located with the states CERES program to develop a system that would serve SNEP needs for independence during the course of the project yet could be integrated with ongoing programs in California after SNEPs completion. The SNEP GIS Center was also coordinated with the Alexandria system at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which serves as a storage location following SNEPs completion and before the system can be made more widely available via public media. SNEP information and some databases are accessible on-line via the World Wide Web.
For detailed explanation of the SNEP GIS, see appendix 3 in this volume.